Last week, Video got the chance to sit down with Justin Gary, CEO of Gary Games and creator of Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer to discuss what's been happening with the game, where it's going, and what's happening at Gencon this year. Much thanks to Justin for taking the time to speak with us.
Video, G30: Justin, you had the release of the first expansion to Ascension, Return of the Fallen, and the iOS version of Chronicle of the Godslayer both come out in the past week, so it must be a pretty exciting time for you guys over there.
Justin Gary: Yeah, it's really been wonderful for us, we weren't 100% sure of the timing of everything. We had to deal with shipping to get Return of the Fallen in and then Apple approval for the iOS came down within 24 hours of the release, so it's been a good time over here.
VG30: I had the fortune of being one of the playtesters for the iOS app. We were a little surprised of how quickly it got approved, they just kind of just uploaded it and Apple came back and said 'Yeah, it's ready to go'.
JG: Well, I'd like to think the people at Apple have good taste [laugh]. I'm so thrilled with how it all came out, not only being closely involved working with the team at Incinerator who is incredibly talented, but we had all of our playtesters being able to give rounds of feedback and get everything incorporated really smoothly. I think it's one of the cleanest translations of board games to the iOS out there, it's really impressive, we had a very talented team that we worked with.
VG30: I would agree, between you guys and Incinerator Studios, you really stepped up the bar for what an iOS board game can be and should be.
JG: Thanks, that was our goal. There's some other good games out there, that we looked at for benchmarks, the Carcassonne app is fantastic, and Ticket to Ride did a great job. We looked at it and said 'Okay, how do we make the best possible Ascension app and do things that haven't been done before."
We have more stuff that's coming in updates that we'll be releasing: Return of the Fallen and our promo cards will be in-app purchases, we will implement the advanced difficulty ratings, and we're going to be doing rankings, ratings, achievements and all kinds of fun stuff to let people really show what they can do. My initial design goal when I made Ascension was to have deck building and a collectible card game experience that you could play faster than anything else, and now you can play in five minutes!
VG30: My playgroup certainly can't stop playing it on their iPhones. How did you come up with the idea for Ascension?
JG: Well, clearly the grand daddy of deck building games was a big inspiration, Dominion. When I first saw that, I immediately saw the value of the mechanic. Also, I'm a huge Magic the Gathering player and I loved the experience of collectible card games, but the problem with them is that they're always such a huge commitment. Not just the money, but the time, trying to keep up with the cards, and trying to build decks, so the goal with Ascension was to take that experience and make it bite sized, make it something I can buy with a single purchase or with a couple expansions and play it in half an hour and have the experience of building a deck, creating a strategy and seeing it play out in a way that's much more accessible, especially for people who don't have the same time they had in high school and college where you could play cards all day. Now I can get together with my gaming group and play, or now while I'm waiting in line at the bank. It's really trying to distill that experience down to its essence and making it as clean, quick, and accessible as possible. Even when I took components from Dominion where that game had a lot of setup where you had to lay out different piles every time, we said “okay, let's make one central deck of cards that we shuffle and deal out”, instead of having restrictions of how many actions you could play, we got rid of those to help stream line play.
VG30: So you drew a lot from Dominion, do you play any of the other deck building games like Thunderstone or Nightfall?
JG: Ah, yes, I've played them all, well not all, there seems to be a lot of them now [laugh]. I've played Thunderstone, Nightfall, Resident Evil... there's way too many to count, but at this stage its research, not necessarily because I want to play them all, but I do my best to check them all out.
VG30: Ascension feels like its own separate genre with its ever changing board state, you have to kind of keep track of what your opponents are doing.
JG: There's a couple components to that. The inspiration was drafting in Magic, where you have a limited selection of cards and you have to make the best decision from what's there. Ascension taps into mechanics like that where the strategy of the player on my right has a big influence over the strategies available to me. For example, if they're using a big monster fighting strategy, the odds that there will be good monsters on the board when it's my turn go down dramatically, so I'll want to pick a different plan. Also, because the card pool is changing all of the time, I can't plan my entire game out. In Dominion, once I got familiar with the card pool I could plan my strategy and that was it. I knew what my strategy was going to be, and I just had to execute it for the rest of the game. You can't do that in Ascension, you have to adapt your strategy on the fly. I find that experience more compelling, I have to make more interesting decisions interspersed throughout the game as opposed to front loading all of my decision making.
VG30: I was going over your website, and you've posted in your latest news post that you have another Ascension product on the way. Are we talking about a whole new game, another expansion, or what are we hinting at here?
JG: Oh we've got all kinds of goodies. The next expansion is almost complete with it's development. We're hoping to ship that to the printer sometime this month (don't hold me to that). My philosophy on that is “It's ready when it's ready, I don't want to ever put out something that I'm not proud of.” We take our time, but its pretty close, I'm pretty happy with where it's at.
It's an exciting new way to play Ascension, where Return of the Fallen is a really great product, and I highly recommend it because it kind of finishes what I started with Chronicle of the Godslayer. There were a ton of mechanics that I had in the original game that I had to cut just to keep it clean and entry point as possible. The fate mechanic was in the game originally as this really cool dramatic thing, but you didn't really need it to make it a good game. This was where I got to tack that on and reintroduce it the way that I originally played it before I released the game. Plus you actually get to defeat Samael, the fallen god that you're trying to slay in Chronicle of the Godlayer. We got a lot of complaints about that. “Wait, why am I not killing a god? All I get to kill is the avatar?” Here you actually get to kill Samael himself and start controlling the monsters yourself.
The next expansion is going to be more of a big set expansion closer to the size of the original set (Chronicle of the Godslayer) and will start a new story arc continuing in the world of Vigil, but Samael for realsies is dead and now you start facing new threats.
VG30: Let's talk about promo cards. Kythis The Gatekeeper was available to players who pre-ordered their game from their local store or the online store. I'm hearing from some players that they didn't actually get their promos for pre-ordering, do you know what happened with any of that?
JG: Well, the way the system worked, if you ordered from our site we sent you the promo and we also told people that any store that preordered a case of product, we sent the promos out to the distributors to be sent to the store. So if the store didn't preorder then they didn't get the promo card, so I think some of the fans who ordered from those stores perhaps didn't get their promo cards. We're doing our best to honor everybody, if you preordered the product and you didn't get the promo and feel you got cheated send an email to us, webmaster@garygames.com and we'll do our best. Just tell us where you preordered it, and we'll try to make sure everybody who preordered gets it.
VG30: From what I was reading, it was originally planned to be a game day promo, and then it was made into a preorder promo instead, so that may have thrown off some of the stores because they weren't expecting that. I know I didn't get mine, and neither did anybody in my play group, and there was a post in the forums complaining about that.
JG: It was a new program to tie into buying the product early and there were definitely some hiccups. We'll do our best to make it right for anybody who preordered and didn't get the promo, we'll also eventually put Kythis up on the web store for anybody who didn't get the chance to preorder. We always put up them up on our website for a couple bucks once they've been out for a few months.
VG30: I'm actually a real big fan of yours for making the promos so accessible. Originally the promos were selling for something like $15 apiece on eBay when they first came out and then you made them available on the website. I wish more companies would do things like that.
JG: We don't make any money off the promos, we give them away for free. We charge for them on the website to cover our costs for shipping and the service to people who aren't able to get them. The whole point is we're trying to do something that other stand alone games really haven't done, and that's promote in store play. Collectible games are great at that - Magic has Friday Night Magic, and they give away free promos. Other games we work on like Redakai have in store events where we give away product and promos. It just isn't done for stand alone games very much, so it was something we wanted to try.
Part of the value of ascension to the customer is that you don't have to spend that much money to play, you buy a box and you're ready to go. That of course means we don't make as much money, but we felt we could support it with a couple cards here and there to help keep the experience fresh and have new stuff. We've had a great response from fans for it, we have a new set of promos that are currently being printed for the next season, a lot of really cool stuff that I'm excited to be able to show off. We have the Rat King Promo which we did via Board Game Geek which they were able to do as a promotion and support community types like that. Overall I'm really happy with how it came out and people seem to be responding well.
VG30: I know I've gotten all of them so far. There's been some question as to how many of each promo should be appearing in the deck. Obviously some of the more powerful cards like Vedah should only be appearing once, but something like Deep Drone, people are thinking maybe 2 or 3. So is there an official list as to what would be a tournament sanctioned deck?
JG: We don't have an official position here, there's no one true path. This is one of the beauties of Ascension, where in a collectible game I build a deck and you build a deck, and it's really really important that there are strict rules about what cards I'm allowed to play and which ones I am not because my deck being better than yours gives me an unfair advantage. The fortunate thing about Ascension is we're all playing off of the same center deck, so everyone has the same odds at the start, so even if the decks are a little bit different, that's ok.
That being said, we do have recommendations. As you said, Vedah and any really high costs cards you don't want to put a lot of copies of in a deck because it could unbalance the deck and if you have a ton of high cost cards it'll be more likely to glut and not be as fun to play. So we recommend one copy of Vedah, some people like to play with one Pathwarden, some people like two, I do think that two Deep Drones is a good number.. Void Mesmer is coming, but we haven't said what it does yet. That will be for the next game day.
One of the things that I'm really really looking forward to and I hope that fans will be doing is that in Return of the Fallen and Chronicle of the Godslayer you can just shuffle them together and play. With the next expansion it's going to be a very large expansion that is sort of intended to be played by itself, but there is an option to make your own custom deck. I strongly encourage people to do it, I really want to see what fans do when they build their own custom experiences. They can take a couple cards from this set, a couple from here, and then kind of craft the Ascension game you want to play. As the card pool increases I think that will be how a lot of people will want to play. They can post them online and share them and try them out, and we'll take the best ones and try them out here and post them on our Facebook page and our website. Once the card pool is large enough, there's no reason that you have to play Ascension exactly the way I played it, you can play the way you want to play it. I'm sure you'll come up with a lot of cool stuff, for example in the Return of the Fallen we included rules for Team Play which was a fan suggestion after the first set. I look forward to unleashing the creativity of our fans to see what they come up with.
VG30: About shuffling in the expansion with the base set, we played it both ways. The expansion by itself, my wife and I played. We felt a huge power ramp in it where we were able to trash through cards fast, when we moved it into the base set, the power was still there, but it felt more balanced, like it belonged in there. The big problem was that the card cut is different now, so what was the reason for that?
JG: There's been a little bit of drama about that. Basically, we got complaints when we first released Ascension that the card stock was too thick and glossy, it didn't shuffle well, and I was inclined to agree. It was a little bit thicker than we had anticipated, the gloss finish made them fractionally larger. So we started researching to find better card stock, and we did. I think the card stock on Return of the Fallen is much better, is comparable to the card quality on your standard trading card games and so when we found the new card stock we said “This is it, we've solved the problem!” So we switched over, the downside of course being that it's a noticeable difference when you shuffle them together without sleeves with the base set. It's an unfortunate thing, but we had to make a decision to either stick with the worse card stock that we know people don't like as much or we had to make the improvement and take the hit as we go.
Everything we print going forward including reprints of the base game will be prints on the new card stock, this should be a one time problem, which is not a problem at all if you have the sleeves which you can buy from us directly or use standard CCG sleeves. I know some people don't like sleeves, and I apologize for any inconvenience or trouble this has caused, but we tried to make a decision that would influence the life span of the game. For anyone who didn't buy sleeves with the initial set, we're running a special taking 1/3rd off if you want to buy enough sleeves to cover the base set and the expansion it'll be $21, which is a pretty good deal to have something that will protect your game and make it an overall better looking experience. Hopefully for most people that will be ok. Later this year we'll be reprinting Chronicle of the Godslayer on the new card stock, and we're trying to work out a program for people who bought the original game to maybe get a discount on the new version if they wanted. We're doing our best to help the people who feel like they got hurt by this change, but I believe that everyone will overall benefit from it.
VG30: Are you planning on identifying somewhere on the box that it'll be the new card stock?
JG: We're going to put some kind of clear mark on the box when we reprint to make it obvious to people that it's updated. I don't know if we'll do something that specifically says “New Improved Card Stock”, but it'll be clear to anyone looking for it. In the mean time, you can shuffle them together, the game still works fine. If it's noticeable to you and bothers you, sleeves solve the problem completely.
VG30: How was Origins for you guys? Anything happen there that's exciting?
JG: Origins was great, we were nominated for an Origins Award, unfortunately we didn't win, but the nomination is a big honor. It was the first time we got to sell Return of the Fallen and show off the completed iOS app. People who came to origins had a real treat, they could own the game before anyone else and see the app, and we got a lot of good feedback. It was a good event as far as time line wise for us because we had these products releasing at the same time.
It's always great to be able to interact with fans and see people play. It's why we do these conventions, to see people play and interact with them. Otherwise we're stuck over here, and we like to game.
VG30: I saw you guys at Gencon last year and the tables were packed. I couldn't get a seat.
JG: At Gencon last year, we were swarmed. We were in the entrepreneurs alley, in the far back corner of the hall with terrible placement, with a little 10 x 20 booth, and we were just packed. We had so many people we sorta overflowed into neighboring booths. This year our booth is three times as big, with better placement, and we have events scheduled in the events area, so hopefully we're better prepared for the onslaught of Gencon this year.
VG30: Let's talk about these Gencon events. There's two different kinds of events that are running, there's the standard tournaments and then the Godslayer tournament. Let's start with the standard tournament, on the event description, it states that there is a Gencon promo card, and a Gencon prize card Can you talk a little about that?
JG: We'll get back to you on that, because I don't know if we're going to have cards exclusive to Gencon there, but we will have promo cards there. So probably what we'll end up doing is giving away some of the promos we've already used. Also, we'll have the promo for the next game day that maybe we'll give away at gencon. We'll make sure it's awesome, we'll give you some cool stuff, and if the thing that I think will be ready that I can't talk about yet because I can't confirm that it's ready, then we'll have something really cool that will be ready for the people at Gencon with is sort of a little set of exclusive promo cards, but I don't yet want to say anything until I know for sure it's happening.
VG30: Okay, let's talk about the Godslayer Tournament. From what I've read, this is the big ending to this part of the Ascension story. You're going to have all sorts of prizes, including an iPad 2 and from what I understand, a chance to have your own card?
JG: Yup, giving away the ability to be the “God Slayer”, this is the big thing everybody has been fighting for – to slay Samael. The winner of this tournament will become the Godslayer and we'll use their inspiration towards a new card that will be included in either a future expansion or a promo card depending on the timing, so we'll have them help us direct the art, what the card's going to do, obviously with our oversight to ensure everything is balanced, but it's a real chance to become part of the Ascension lore.
We're really excited about this world we've been building, we haven't communicated it to tons of players, but we had a short story on the website and if you read the flavor text on the cards you can sort of tell what's going on. The story arc is going to continue and getting to be immortalized as a card as the god slayer, I think will be really cool for people. I know if I were allowed to play I would be really excited about it.
VG30: Is the story arc going to continue in that Samael has been slain and something has replaced him or a new threat has come out?
JG: That's the gist of it. Samael will have been slain by the completion of the Return of the Fallen, and this event is the culmination of that story arc. There's a new threat coming, some of the characters and monsters that you're familiar with will take on new roles, and new allies and villains that you'll encounter coming up. We're coming up with ways that we can potentially tell that story other than just cards and tournaments.
VG30: Last question for you here, What's strategy do you aim for while playing?
JG: Ha Ha! That's not fair! I really believe Ascension isn't a game where you can say "I have one strategy and that's it." It really depends on what the board is and what your opponents are doing. I like to switch it up, I've been a CCG player for a long time so I have a soft spot for anything that lets me draw cards or manipulate the board, so I'm partial to a lot of those effect, but I really love a lot of things that are unique and different.
VG30: Justin, thank you so so much for taking time to talk with us I really appreciate your time. We're looking forward to seeing you at Gencon.
